HCL America has five new Analyst Relations and Influencer Relations job openings

HCL America is actively looking to hire five analyst relations (AR) professionals:

• Two AR pros (8-10 years experience) to focus on Financial Services and Manufacturing verticals
• Three Influencer Relations managers (10-12 years experience) to focus on managing relationships with TPI, Equaterra, Everest, neoIT, et cetera

Job descriptions are attached.

To submit a resume or to get

How closely does AR, PR and Sales have to coordinate?

Here is an interesting comment (click to enlarge) that might portend a problem for technology vendors in the near future:

This reminds me of the discussions in the mid-90′s around the then nascent market category of customer relattionship management (CRM). One of the perceived benefits of CRM was that it would provide companies a single view of the customer that would make life easier for the customer and provide business value to the company. But there was also huge disagreements over who would “own” the customer: customer service, marketing or sales.

Today, people are starting to play multiple roles as customers, influencers, collaborators and

Teradata’s Katherine Knowles talks about her broader focus on third party influencers

One of the sharpest thinkers about analyst relations (AR) is Katherine Knowles, long time AR honcho for Teradata. When Teradata was spun off from NCR last fall, Katherine got an interesting new title: Director of Third-Party Influencers. One of the intriguing aspects of this change is how Katherine includes academics into the mix of influencers.

In the seven-minute podcast Third Party Influencers-Analysts, Academics and Consultants, Katherine explains why Teradata combined analysts, academics and consultants into one group. Katherine also describes and provides examples of the resultant synergies.

You can download the podcast from iTunes or stream it from the podcast page.

This move by Teradata is similar to what SAP did when it morphed

Steps for AR teams for starting with analyst blogs

Welcome members of Forrester’s AR Council. Here are those steps A through F that I rattled off at the beinging of the panel. I also put in links to directories of analysts blogs and Don Bulmer’s blog. If the session ran out before we got to your question or you want more depth, leave your question as a comment and I’ll answer it.

In case you’re wondering what this is post is about, today SageCircle’s Carter Lusher was a member of the “Analyst Relations 2.0″ panel at the Forrester Analyst Relations Council (ARC) meeting, which was co-located with Forrester’s IT Forum. The focus of the discussion was on analyst blogs and how AR teams need to think about them. Other members of the panel included analysts  Jonathan Eunice from Illuminata and Dana Gardner from Interarbor Solutions. Besides Carter on the AR services side was KCG’s Bill Hopkins (Tekrati’s Barbara French could not make the meeting so Bill took her place). The whole circus was moderated by Forrester VP Laura Ramos. The panel and audience discussion was quite lively, fun, and raised a number of issues.

 One of the requests by panel organizer Trisha Mirel was that we give the AR managers in attendance a list of practical action items to start incorporating analyst blogs into how they work. Obviously, this is something SageCircle has covered on a number of occasions (see our series of posts on social media). The more important recommendation is that interacting with analysts via their blogs should be part of an overall social media plan incorporated into the strategic AR plan. Getting started is quite simple with a few steps that go from A to F: ask… begin… conduct… develop… educate… forward…

 SageCircle Technique:

• A = Ask your top analysts about their current or planned blogs, either under personal or firm brands
  A = Ask you customers about where they go for information and advice for product decisions
• B = Begin to add analyst blogs to your overall AR plan, especially the